ok so the trailer was leaked early again...with all the alien movies since 1986 my initial excitement was moderate and only interest because of Ridley...but the visuals on this movie are a level above what I was expecting...its nice to see a SPACE movie on an alien planet by a quality director...love it!

Ah, Alien yes but not as we know it. He said no Xenomorph. The Xenomorph might already have been a variation of another race if we ignore the PVsA films. So what we see here might be a pre pre version something we don't know is Alien at first.

^I think it's safe to say in this instance "not a prequel" means not a prequel in terms of plot and narrative. This is not the story of a crew that did the exact same thing as the crew of the Nostromo, only a few years prior, nor is it a tale of young Ripley struggling to be a single mum space trucker. It's a new story that takes place earlier in the timeline in the same continuity. The only possible link being that derelict, or perhaps just the race that built it. Actually, I think according to Scott, Blade Runner is also meant to take place in the same continuity.

Ah, Alien yes but not as we know it. He said no Xenomorph. The Xenomorph might already have been a variation of another race if we ignore the PVsA films. So what we see here might be a pre pre version something we don't know is Alien at first.

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IF we ignore Alien vs Predator? IF!?!!? You say that as if there could possibly be a sane alternative to ignoring them.

Anyway...From what I've always taken to be Ridley's take on things, the "xenomorphs" (a James Cameron invented moniker IIRC) were just bio-mechanical weapons and that derelict was a "battle wagon" for deploying them. I think he's even said that the space jockey isn't a life-form in and of itself but another purpose built bio-mechanoid, which probably means the race that created them are something else entierly.

In that recent interview he mentions 'Chariots of the Gods' which combined with that shot of a huge human looking (but still Giger-esq) face suggests that whatever these things were, they've been to Earth before and possibly had a hand in our own evolution. An old story yes, but then Scott is a big fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Still not sure what I think about the aliens being some kind of "bio weapon." While the idea of them as soulless, engineered killing machines does still make them seem fairly ominous and terrifying.... I think I kinda prefer them as just mysterious creatures from some dark, unholy, nightmarish world in the far depths of space.

At the very least, I hope we don't have to see them actually being created in a lab or something. I think that really WOULD remove too much of the mystery.

^Hey for all we know they're nothing more than farming equipment meant for bio-forming new worlds. The race that created them could be billions of years ahead of us and as such even their most innocuous technology could be horrendously dangerous in human hands. They might view planetary biospheres the same way we view a tiny colony of micro-organisms growing on some damp rock.

Actually, a thought occurs to me; if they are weapons, what if they're the *least* of this race's arsenal? Like their equivalent of .22 rounds? If that's the case what would their *serious* hardware look like? I mean I wouldn't want to stumble across their equivalent to thermonuclear warheads.

Actually, a thought occurs to me; if they are weapons, what if they're the *least* of this race's arsenal? Like their equivalent of .22 rounds? If that's the case what would their *serious* hardware look like? I mean I wouldn't want to stumble across their equivalent to thermonuclear warheads.

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On the flip side, for such an advanced race, you'd think they could come up with a quicker, more effecient weapon than this-- a creature with a really elaborate life cycle, which has to spend hours gestating in another creature, and which can be frightened off by fire, of all things.

And oh yeah, it can be blown apart by simple projectile weapons as well.

^Simple projectile weapons that cause the creature to release a cloud of molecular acid. If this is done in a pressurised environment like a spaceship then, well, goodbye atmosphere. Oh and I'd say a gestation cycle from spore to larva to adult in under 24 hours is astonishingly virulent. As for the life-cycle, it's clearly efficient as with every victim it takes it adds to it's own numbers; either as a host or in the absence of a queen, in the fabrication of a new spore. Indeed, the idea of self replicating nano-machines as a weapon of mass destruction is a well know sci-fi trope, this is basically the same concept but on the macroscopic scale.

Regardless, the efficiency of a weapon is dependent on the nature of the enemy for which it was intended. We have no idea of this race's motivations. It could the purely a weapon of terror meant to impede and weaken an enemy, not achieve total victory on it's own. But like I said, this could just be the very least of their arsenal...or a gardening tool.

On the flip side, for such an advanced race, you'd think they could come up with a quicker, more effecient weapon than this-- a creature with a really elaborate life cycle, which has to spend hours gestating in another creature, and which can be frightened off by fire, of all things.

And oh yeah, it can be blown apart by simple projectile weapons as well.

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Ridley Scott's alien was indestructible, unstoppable and uncommunicable. The only way Ripley got rid of it was to blow it out an airlock and there's no evidence to suggest even that killed it. The alien was only Disneyfied from the second movie on.

Xenomorphs combine the genetic traits amalgamated in the queen with the host's specialisation to the environment the final alien will end up in.
Adapting a biological killing machine to a new environment within a 24 hour time frame doesn't seem that inefficient.

On the flip side, for such an advanced race, you'd think they could come up with a quicker, more effecient weapon than this-- a creature with a really elaborate life cycle, which has to spend hours gestating in another creature, and which can be frightened off by fire, of all things.

And oh yeah, it can be blown apart by simple projectile weapons as well.

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Ridley Scott's alien was indestructible, unstoppable and uncommunicable. The only way Ripley got rid of it was to blow it out an airlock and there's no evidence to suggest even that killed it. The alien was only Disneyfied from the second movie on.

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Not so. In the first film it was made clear that it wasn't invulnerable (they cut into one with a simple surgical tool) and I think even Dan O'Bannon said the thing wasn't meant to be indestructible. That's why he came up with acid for blood as a defence mechanism; as Parker says in the film "...you don't dare kill it."

That wasn't so much of a problem in the second film because they weren't on a space ship...though even that didn't stop Drake from getting his face melted off.

The face-hugger? Yes and they had no reason to presume "Kane's son" was any different. Why else do you think they went after the thing with cattleprods, nets and flame-throwers? They had guns at their disposal; you can see them quite clearly when they investigated the wreck. Granted, they also thought the thing was still the size of a cat at the time, but that doesn't change the facts.

As I said, Dan O'Bannon was pretty explicit in on of the DVD interviews that he didn't like the idea of some invulnerable beast where the bullets would just bounce off it. He wanted it to be a plausible, logical and extremely dangerous animal, not some supernatural terror.